


Pohjola: Wild Woods

by Naoe



Series: Pohjola [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dragons, Finnish Mythology - Freeform, Garuda Castiel, Hunter Charlie Bradbury, Hunter Dean Winchester, I'm mucking around with myths, Lawyer Sam Winchester, M/M, Magic, Mermaids, Nordic Mythology - Freeform, Overlap of mythologies, Phoenix Castiel, Vampires, Witch Meg Masters, World Tree, epic adventure, everything trying to eat humans, soul rivers, souls of the dead, these damn pixies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-22 23:46:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18537934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naoe/pseuds/Naoe
Summary: Second Part to Pohjola: Immigrant SongThis cannot stand alone, so please read that first!Dean and Cas have been forced into another dimension, the nexus of mythological belief in the underworld, in order to find and fix the seal between worlds that Louhi disrupted in order to strengthen herself and destroy the world.Welcome to the world where living humans are an anomaly and/or food, sunshine is a myth, and pixies are assholes. While they struggle to get to the World Tree, Sam, Meg, and Charlie are trying to find a way to bring them back in one piece. Fun times!





	Pohjola: Wild Woods

**Author's Note:**

> So, serious liberties have been taken with various mythologies in order for this to work, so if it does not sound 100% correct, you would be right. It’s probably not. I’ve taken heavily from Norse mythology here, although there are other cultural mythologies (Greek, Finnish, Buddhist) mixed in. If I’ve really screwed it up, tell me.
> 
> As I've stated elsewhere, I am done with Bangs. This was originally written to be part of DCBB 2018, but I was preoccupied with other things and overall tired of the fandom shenanigans. Thus, once I am done with all my Destiel works, I will be done with Supernatural. 
> 
> **MIND** , my Destiel files are more backed up than a constipated hippo, so this is going to take a while.
> 
> I will be releasing this slowly, along with the others I have going in order to FORCE myself to keep a schedule. SO, for all intents and purposes, this is a WIP. 
> 
> KEEP IN MIND: This has a vague horror feel to it because of all the creatures that show up. There are some graphic descriptions so this is not for the weak stomached.
> 
> Please feel free to drop constructive criticism. I'm open to correction.

**Cas**

The first thing Cas noticed, before even opening his eyes, was that he was cold. Cas rarely actually felt changes in temperature, so the sheer fact he felt cold was _alarming_. Following that was the aching hollow that ballooned up and out from his core, the usual heat stored there simmering lowly as if conserving itself.

He heard a rustling nearby and forced his eyes open as he sat up, noting that, one, he had lost his eyeglasses and, two, Dean was seemingly unhurt but also sitting up and looking around nervously. Beyond Dean–around them both, actually–was a twisted forest whose energy reeked of ancient magic and the leaves that looked like dead skin. He suppressed a shudder as he found himself still gripping the coin Ukko had slipped into it. He shoved it into his jeans’ pocket and shivered against in the cold.

“Guess we’re not in Kansas anymore,” he heard Dean joke nervously as he got to his feet.

That crass humor was going to kill them. “Dean, we’re not even in the right _dimension_ anymore.”

He swallowed his huff and took a moment to really look up into the wet, pulsating gray and finally notice what had been eating at him: there was no sun. The cold here was thick with dull magic, with ancient magicks and spells that wanted to lull him to sleep. It sucked at his spirit’s core and he swore lowly when he thought about how he was going to die from a lack of sunlight here.

It was as he made that realization that there came a low-rumbling roar that he recognized to his cells and loathed with all his being. _Nidhogg’s young._ Young dragonets from the roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Their parent, Nidhogg, lived beneath the roots of the World Tree and devoured corpses, generally from the great river, Hvergelmir, the font of all rivers. His dragonets–the gods knew how they were sired–scoured the realm for fresher meat to bring to him.

This was bad.

Nidhogg loved human meat the most.

Cas forced himself to his feet, already feeling the heaviness of his Flames dying within him, and looked out as far as he could past the tree line.

No sun. Only thick gray clouds and heavy air.

“Well, that’s no good,” he breathed out, rolling his lips in and looking around himself briefly.

Dean stared at him and groaned heavily. “ _Sonuvabitch_!”

Cas snorted as he slowly moved towards the black patch that stood midair between them and what looked like acres of more white birch forest. “Dean, look,” he said softly, beckoning him. “The portal has been closed but…here.”

He pointed out the top left corner. There was a fissure in the smooth blackness, like a crack in a plate of glass. It glittered with wild rainbow light trying to edge through the corruption, and Cas hissed when he tried to touch it, the iciness of it burning him. “It’s cracking. It doesn’t look like it will last too long.”

Dean eyed it and also tried to touch it before Cas could stop him, swearing as he pulled back a finger with what looked like a second-degree burn. “Yeah. That’s not good,” he muttered.

“Obviously,” Cas deadpanned. He slowly turned and eyed the forest, the sound of running water nearby and the crunch of leaves under their feet. “Looks like we found all the people Louhi and Ajatar took…”

“That’s disgusting.” He grimaced. “What are those black things hanging off them? They look like eggplants!”

Cas stepped closer to the nearest tree with a low-hanging fruit, eyeing them. “I…don’t think so, Dean.”

Dean stepped closer and Cas showed him the side of the black fruit. “Oh, gods. That’s…so _gross_ …”

As Dean stumbled away to hack and try not to vomit, Cas focused his gaze. The black fruit actually looked like a small baby, the hands and legs curled up over the stomach and chest. A tiny head rested its chin against its chest, and he could see that this was gnome-producing fruit. This particular fruit even looked close to being ripe, and, curiosity egging him on, Cas took a step closer to look at it.

At his movement and proximity, the head moved, glittering red eyes snapping wide open and a mouthful of needled teeth hissing at him through the dark membrane, causing Cas to swear and fall back onto his ass. “What the fuck!”

Dean rushed to his side, and now the creature was furious, kicking at the black film that surrounded it, until a claw finally ripped it open. The creature fell to the ground with a wet, heavy splat, unable to move much and covered in foul, dark dead blood, but struggling regardless of its incomplete form to move in their direction.

“Holy shit!” Dean whimpered at the dark-skinned baby-gnome thing. It mewed and shivered, pulling itself towards them with determination.

Terrified at the misshapen thing, they crawled a bit further away and struggled to get to their feet before it reached them.

It was just as well they fell back, as the sound like hundreds of hornets came through the forest, heading to their location with chilling speed.

“What the fuck is that?” Dean demanded _sotto voce_.

The answer swarmed to the now-screeching gnome-baby, the sticky goo on its body hindering it now that it was drying a bit. Cas saw the swarm but before he could say anything, Dean muttered, “Fucking _pixies_! I _hate_ pixies!”

Indeed, the cloud of armed and armored pixies was buzzing around the gnome-baby, poking it with their spears and making it shriek and squeal. A larger pixie, the size of a Barbie doll, ululating a battle cry before setting off a set of arrows that struck the black thing in its red eyes.

Either dead or paralyzed, it fell silent, and the pixies flew around it victoriously.

Beyond that tree, a voice called out, “Whas ‘ere? Whas ‘ere? Botherin’ me trees?”

The pixies grinned at each other and flew up out of sight.

A troll in a small gray apron stumbled drunkenly into the small clearing, swearing darkly at the dead gnome. “Gor! Shez gonna kill me fer certain now!” It bent to look at the baby and shot backwards, eyes darting around the trees, landing on Dean and Cas’s presence not too far away.

Not that the troll was able to say much, as the swarm descended on him with malicious glee, punctuated with shill laughter and tiny sounds of bows being drawn and arrows shot. “Fuck me!” The troll grunted heavily and raised its arm to protect its eyes from fairy darts. “Ya wee bastards! Jus let me find me pest spray!”

More pixies descended on him, apparently nipping and biting at him. “Ya fuckin’ bugs! I’ll get you, see that I don’t!!”

The troll ran away with most of the pixies pursuing him, their wild laughter only slightly dimmed by a new roar from the dragonet. The last few pixies ignored the roar, eyed the dead gnome baby, and seemed to have a conversation before one pulled out some fine thread.

“It’s a spider wrapping,” Dean whispered into Cas’s ear, “They’re going to take it back and eat it.”

 _Definitely gross,_ Cas thought. He didn’t worry too much about the troll; they were hard to kill without iron or sun and the pixies would probably just torment it until they grew tired.

Sure enough, the pixies wrapped the gnome up and, between three of them, easily hefted it up and flew away in formation.

Cas released a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. Behind him, Dean also relaxed a bit. “This is fucking intense,” he huffed, raking a hand through his sweaty hair. “And we still don’t know what that roar was?”

“Oh,” Cas sighed, rubbing his forehead where a headache wanted to bloom, “That was a Nidhogg’s young.”

“Neat-hog?” Dean scowled at him. “Is it some sort of magic pig thing?”

Cas fought his urge to roll his eyes and pushed himself to his feet. “Need-Hog. Sometimes Nith-hogger,[1] but we’ll use the English variant because it’s just easier.” Dean gave him a look at he brushed leaves and dirt off his ass. Cas ignored him. “Anyway, he’s an ancient dragon who lives in the roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, and feeds on corpses that fall to Nástrǫnd, a level of Norse Sheol.”[2]

“More Sheol, huh?”

Cas definitely huffed this time, his breath pluming faintly. “This is no laughing matter, Dean. We are in what might be termed Niflheim, but I believe you may know it by Purgatory. A place between the Light and the Dark punishments.”

“I thought this was like Hissy or something?”

“ _Hiisi_ ,” Cas corrected, looking around for any straggling pixies. “And because we are in one space, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t overlap with others.”

The earth beneath their feet was soft and smelled of decay. The roar sounded overhead again, causing Dean to look up again. “Okay, so you were saying about a dragon in a bush?”

“No, Nidhogg, who lives at the roots of the World Tree. He is a voracious eater and if he can get it, he prefers a snack of fresh human.”

He heard Dean swallow nervously and was glad they managed to locate his duffle bag after some shifting of leaves. He looked more at ease with his machete in hand. “So, what? These are his kids out to find a snack?”

“Yes. They are dragonets, about the size of gryphon.” Cas pondered as Dean dug out a granola bar and ate it, refusing the water as he knew Dean–only human–would need it. “They probably hunt humans wandering the realm looking for lost loved ones or salvation.”

“That happen a lot?” Dean asked as he tightened the cap on his water bottle.

Cas snorted. “If the poets are correct, fairly often.”

They grinned at each other and, after a brief consultation and a lack of sun to guide them, decided to find a river and follow it. However, the white birch trees with the black fruit on them freaked them both out quite a bit, so they avoided entering the forest and just trusted Cas’s hearing.

“You sure we aren’t gonna end up in Kentucky or something?” Dean joked as he followed Cas around some prickly brushes that acted like they didn’t want to let go.

“I’d prefer that, if it were possible,” Cas grumped, pushing aside tangle vines with their tiny hooks and mild sedatives that put most creatures to sleep in the vines’ embrace. Forever if the skeletal remains that crunched beneath their feet were an indication. “This place… it’s just a…NESTING doll of death traps!”

They finally broke out into a small riverside clearing and eyed the water grimly.

It was gray and filmy. There were long faces and arms beneath the surface, the eyes pleading for release, hands trying to break the water tension to freedom.

“Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?” Dean pointed at the water. “Are those _souls_ in there? Like in the River Styx fucking souls in the water?!”

“Well, I suppose something like that.” He paused and watched the water swirl the souls away downstream. “I actually have no idea.”

Dean chuckled humorlessly. “I thought we got tossed into Sheol, but it’s actually fucking Wonderland. Just follow the White Rabbit or some shit.” He dropped his bag and crouched, rubbing the back of his neck with his hands. “So fucking tired of this bullshit already and we haven’t even managed more than a mile. Fuck!”

Exhausted himself, Cas crouched next to him and gripped his shoulder. “We need to go to the end. Right now, all we can really see is trees.”

“Yeah, yeah, for the forest. Gotcha.” Dean smirked, stretching as he stood.

Cas stared at him, not knowing what he meant.

“Y’know? Can’t see the forest for the trees?” He paused, one arm crossed behind his head as his other gripped his wrist and tugged. A small pop made Dean sigh with relief and he dropped his arms and rolled his head to more clicks and pops.

“Oh! One of your clever human epithets?”

“Yeah, whatever Webster.” Dean shook his head minutely as he rolled his shoulders again, bending over to grab his duffle. “Let’s get moving. We’re on a clock.”

Cas tried to mimic Dean’s motions, as just seeing the relief on Dean’s face was fascinatingly human, but it did nothing for him at all. At his core, the Flame of his life throbbed fitfully, and he stowed his new thoughts of impending mortality to follow along behind Dean.

The riverbank was narrow and covered in rounded gray pebbles. It stank of mold and old mushrooms, with the stones touching the water slick with black slime that neither of them wanted to touch.

The forest around them grew quieter as the time passed, but there were no other signs of approaching dusk or night. They walked along more, the trees beginning to thin as the water began to get more riotous, the rocks in the center of the river ragged and catching souls along their edges, ripping them in two. Cas stopped watching after the first couple, but Dean gaped at the scene for a full minute, his brain seeming to take that long to recognize what he was viewing.

The river they followed, it seemed, was one of a branch of rivers, and they had made it to the fork in what felt like forever. Time had no weight here and it was disturbing how much Cas had grown used to its constant measurement in the human world.

As they reached the edge of the forest acing the branching spot, they eyed the clearing between the two rivers suspiciously. There was a huge nest formed there at the tip, made of brown leaves and yellowed bones. Dean hissed and pulled Cas back.

“Fuck!” He spat, “It’s a gods damned colony of pixies!”

“Again?” Cas peered at the colony. It resembled a wasps’ nest in that the leaves and bones were set in the center, while the same sticky thread as the pixies used to carry off the gnome baby was obviously also used to create homes. Twigs and even skulls from various species decorated the colony, tiny pixie midges, still too young and minuscule to hunt, dangled from empty eye sockets and holes were noses once hung. It was the size of a small house and that meant for every pixie they saw, there were at least 100 they didn’t.

“Aw, this is going to suck.” Dean pointed to the other side of the fork. There was a small island on the left, blurry from what was probably a barrier around it. On the other side was overgrown with more tangle vines, a few pixie corpses rotting on them, along with what looked like a deer and some small animals. On the other side of the island, they couldn’t see because of the barrier that surrounded it.

“What do you think?” Cas asked quietly, looking at the barrier. If he peered at it at an angle, he could almost see the sigils that locked it in place. “The barrier may be to keep out pixies.”

Dean peered at the barrier too. “Huh. Think we could jump it?”

They both eyed the distance between the mainland and the island, and Cas felt Dean shudder behind him. “What do you think would happen if we fell in?”

“Best case, it’s the Lethe and we’ll just forget everything when we fall in, complete amnesia.” Cas huffed out an exhausted breath and said, “Worst case, we’ll be dragged to the bottom of the river by desperate and angry souls and end up food for Nidhogg to feast on.”

“I love a win-win scenario,” Dean muttered darkly.

“We have to get past the biggest nest of pixies I, personally, have ever seen in my long life, Dean.”

They both turned to see the pixies fighting bitterly over a piece of undeterminable flesh. They flew against each other and turned on every other pixie, stabbing them dead without a care. The winner, a large red-armored pixie howled victory and flew into a hole underneath what looked to be a troll skull.

The other pixies scuffled a bit and then they set to tossing the dead pixies into the tangle vines.

“Huh, I didn’t know they even bothered with the bodies. I kinda thought they just ate them.”

Cas shook his head. “Apparently not. But there doesn’t seem to be any grief over them either.”

Dean sighed in exasperation, and Cas caught him running a hand over his face, pausing over his mouth until it dragged one and gripped his chin. “Gods, I fucking _hate_ pixies.”

“Well, what do we do then.” Cas nodded towards the pixies’ colony.

“I’m…open to suggestions,” Dean hedged. “I don’t think we can jump that gap easily,” he added.

Cas agreed with that assessment. “I…” He paused and considered what power he had left in him. Swallowing hard to hide his fear, he tried to confidently say, “I think I can fly us across if we run at it.”

“You think?”

“Well,” Cas muttered, “With both our weights, the duffle bag, the fact we aren’t going to be able to build any height for my wings, and that we’re going to be chased by gods know how many homicidal pixies who are made for speed… yes. I think. I think we can make it on a long glide.” He licked his lips nervously. “ _Probably_. If the pixies don’t hit me with too many faery shots.”

“Just great.” Dean flung his hands up in frustration. “Sadly, that probably is better than what I was thinking, which was run like Death was on our heels and just jump for it.”

Cas eyed him reproachfully. “Yes, that has no percentage of success, Dean.”

“It was better than just standing here at the edge of a clearing, watching evil little pixie assholes kill each other over a strip of skin, _Cas_.”

Shaking his head at Dean sarcastic tone, he looked to the pixies again. Because there was no dusk approaching, the pixies looked as active as ever. Scowling, he realized they would have to do this regardless of how active the pixies were.

“Fine.” He intoned, stretching a bit, “Let’s get this over with. Otherwise, the pixies–or something worse–will find us anyway.”

“Glad you see it my way.”

Cas ignored him and rolled his own shoulders, beckoning his wings free. They sprang forth and the pixies immediately noticed the power surge nearby, sending a few pixies to investigate.

“Fuck! Cas, _now_! _Now_ would be awesome!”

Dean took off running across the clearing, trying to keep as much space between himself and the colony, but like hornets, the pixies started to buzz and rise up into an angry swarm.

As Cas took off running after Dean, the pixies shot at them. Cas figured Dean would be okay; he was used to dealing with pixies, albeit not this many. It was the extra weight, the distance, the lack of power, and the probability of fighting off doses of elf-shot venom that were concerning Cas with this jump.

Dean reached the edge of the water just as Cas flapped open his wings to gain some altitude. The air was so very heavy on his wings, and he fought to stay aloft, even as the pixie swarm began their assault on him. He felt the prick of elf-shot as he continued to dash forward, swooping down just enough to grab Dean by the underarms and yank him viciously across the water.

Beneath them, as if aware of their trespass, the souls swirled and looked to be howling at them, while the pixies screeched warning. He didn’t know what was behind them now, but the shots had stopped even as Cas tossed Dean through the barrier and onto the island. He felt the exhaustion hit him, the elf shot, the lack of power, the low Flame, and, as he hit the barrier himself, he passed out, oblivious to all.

* * *

 

[1] Níðhöggr: the dragon that chews on the roots of the World Tree, Yggdrasil. He also eats the dead bodies of unworthy soldiers who fall into Nástrǫnd (Corpse Shore) as they aren't worthy of Vahalla. 

[2] Sheol=Hades

 


End file.
